Thursday, June 30, 2011

California and Governor Jerry Brown made a massive error in the formation of a California Online Tax, that amounts to triple taxation in the state for online S-corporations. Amazon and Overstock aren't the only ones hurt by the new tax, and it should be challenged in court...

Unfortunately, Governor Brown has signed into law the bill that we emailed you about earlier today. As a result of this, contracts with all California residents participating in the Amazon Associates Program are terminated effective today, June 29, 2011...

...Frankly, while the law itself has many affiliates hoping mad, it was bound to happen. But the law's got a nasty bug in it that must be cleared up. I'll use my online sports game company as an example.

The State Of California has already taxed my Internet company for income earned. All of our sales are online. Plus, they get me for a personal income tax!

Under the new law, an online company like mine could be taxed three times: for total income tax, corporate, tax and then for sales tax. That's too much.

There's nothing in the law preventing such a scenario from happening, because there's to language to restrict the State Of California from such an action. If you're an online legal California Corporation, you're going to get taxed three times. It's that simple.

...It sets up a massive incentive for thousands of California Corporations to just quit the state and find other homes... One day next year, Governor Brown's going to wake up to the reality of no new taxes collected, and a massive exodus of Internet vendors. By then, any retro action would be too little, too late.

That's okay.

Send the businesses our way. We need smart, talented entrepreneurs who want to live in a free state. I mean, a Red State.

...how can a 54 year-old Music teacher retire on a pension of $130,000 after working only 33 years and contributing only $193,000? Since he retired in 2009 he has already received more than he contributed ($225,000). That does not seem reasonable to the 95% of IL workers who are not in the state pension system. The cash value of his pension is 8 times what Social Security would be for the same salary and years worked. Why does any public employee deserve more than 8 times Social Security?

Here are the stats for the “average” retired teacher:1. Average TRS [Teachers' Retirement System] pension – $46,000.2. Average age at retirement – 58.3. Average years worked – 25.4. Average salary final year $61,000.

Do you prefer slavery or freedom? I ask that question because the modern-day version of slavery in this country is being forced to join a union -- and pay union dues -- against your will. And, as it turns out, in "union/slave states" there are provably fewer jobs and lower wages.

The business world is abuzz over the National Labor Relations Board's complaint vs. Boeing's new South Carolina production line. For NLRB critics, the case boils down to one thing: "right-to-work" laws.

Right-to-work states have generally lower unemployment, higher job growth, lower taxes and better business climates. They have growing populations and have been attracting businesses from other states.

In most states, once a workplace is unionized, employees are required to join the union or they can't work there. But 22 states, including South Carolina, have passed laws that give employees the right not to join. Hence the term "right-to-work."

Unions dislike these laws for the obvious reason: It reduces their membership.

Critics like the Chamber of Commerce say a union-friendly NLRB is simply punishing Boeing for choosing a right-to-work state, a charge the agency has rejected.

But if the complaint stands, it could stop firms in heavily unionized states from expanding or moving to right-to-work states. [And these states seem] to be a good deal for the workers, too. The U.S. unemployment rate is 9.1%. In right-to-work states the average is 7.9% — 8.6% adjusted for population.

Between 1977-08, employment grew 100% in right-to-work states vs. the national average of 71% and 56.5% in non-right-to-work states. That's according to a January study that Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder did for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.

In this period, real per capita income in the right-to-work states grew 62.3% vs. the national average of 54.7% and 52.8% for non-right-to-work states... Between 2000-09, about 5 million people moved to right-to-work states from other states. The population of 25- to 34-year-olds in right-to-work states has grown 16%, according to an American Legislative Exchange Council study, indicating that they "attract the most productive members of society."

Union members: it's time to throw off your shackles. The Democrat-Union Boss alliance -- and their oppressive regulations from the EPA, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Labor, and dozens of other useless bureaucracies -- are funding your destruction.

An illegal alien, in Polk County , Florida , who got pulled over in a routine traffic stop, ended up "executing" the deputy who stopped him. The deputy was shot eight times, including once behind his right ear at close range. Another deputy was wounded and a police dog killed. A state-wide manhunt ensued. The murderer was found hiding in a wooded area. As soon as he took a shot at the SWAT team, officers opened fire on him. They hit the guy 68 times.

Naturally, the liberal media went nuts and asked why they had to shoot the poor, undocumented immigrant 68 times. Sheriff Grady Judd told the Orlando Sentinel: "Because that's all the bullets we had." Now, is that just about the all-time greatest answer or what!

The Coroner also reported that the illegal alien died of natural causes. When asked by a reporter how that could be, since there were 68 bullet wounds in his body, he simply replied: ... "When you are shot 68 times you are naturally gonna die."

Big energy news was broken at today's press conference at the Chamber. Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell... and Alaska Commissioner of Natural Resources Dan Sullivan announced the state would allow drilling off a strip of state-owned land, expanding energy production:

It would allow the state to start allowing drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, up to three miles off the federally protected regions of ANWR and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, bypassing the need for federal permission... … While the state has no control over drilling in ANWR, it does own the three miles of Arctic Ocean just off the coast—after those three miles, the federal government owns the waters. Officials say it stands to reason that that three-mile ribbon likely cuts through the vast oil deposits believed to lie beneath ANWR and the Arctic Ocean. Alaskan officials and oil companies hope that by drilling in that strip, they can tap into up to a dozen giant oil pools that would otherwise be off-limits.

QOTD: "The [Sixth Circuit] majority [decision upholding Obamacare's individual mandate] is ludicrous. It stated, "Virtually everyone will need health care services at some point, including, in the aggregate, those without health insurance."

All of us will need shelter. Should government control the residential housing market and compel individuals to buy approved housing?

All of us will need clothes. Should government control the clothing market and compel individuals to buy approved clothing?

All of us will need food. Should government control the food supply and compel individuals to buy only approved foods?

All of us will need transportation. Should government control all modes of transportation and compel individuals to buy only approved transportation services?

And, now that the Constitution has been shredded, where does this control over the individual end?

I'll tell you where it ends: with the destruction of this Republic, by a fifth column called the cadaver of the Democrat Party, a once-proud and patriotic group that has been utterly subsumed by the maggots known as Marxists." --Me, just now.

If you still get your news from the trained seals of the left-leaning lamestream media then you’re to be excused if you haven’t heard about the first "World Without Terrorism Conference" in – wait for it – Tehran over the weekend.

Curiouser still is the guest list, which included a number of prominent “US allies” who have been mega beneficiaries of American blood and treasure. AsMEMRI reports, “the conferees included Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Pakistani President Asif 'Ali Zardari, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.” Andrew McCarthy also has details and commentary at National Review Online.

I guess this “conference” wasn’t a big story because it creates a nasty case of dissonance in the pea-size brains of our newsmen. When everyone’s ox is gored it’s hard to find the liberal slant. First and foremost, the event highlights the utter failure of Obama’s “engagement” policy, and what a pitiful sucker the President has willfully chosen to be at America’s expense. It also turns the spotlight on the ungrateful Muslim basterds and the neocons who love them. To think, our very own spawn are betraying us even before the last American has died on their behalf. Then there are the rosy cheeks and white shoes that make up our corps of sophisticated diplomats and spooks. Portraying them as nothing more than bewildered tourists on a tour of the Kasbah is hard when your job is protecting the White House.

"Flash mob crimes" are a growing problem in large cities around the country. The phrase refers to a large crowd of individuals -- usually teens -- that use social networks to coordinate riots, assaults and robberies. And they occur almost exclusively in cities where the concealed carry of firearms is either banned altogether (unconstitutionally, as in Chicago) or permit holders are simply harassed to discourage them from packing.

The inevitable result: law-abiding citizens are unable to protect themselves from swarms of attackers. Consider the following sampling of incidents that have occurred in Philadelphia over the last few months.

The two young women were sitting at a window table inside the Max Brenner restaurant on 15th Street, near Walnut, sharing chocolate fondue after some shopping... But their night on the town was about to become frightening.

...Heading their way was a pack of teens roving through Center City after leaving a North Philadelphia music festival... They were part of about 100 or more young people who had left Saturday night's event, police said, committing a series of violent assaults and robberies, including one against Maria, 25, of North Philadelphia, and her cousin Cecilia, 29, of Havertown.

A WOMAN'S leg was broken and several other people were injured Saturday night when a large group of teens accosted pedestrians in Spring Garden, police and witnesses said... Philadelphia police responded to two reports of pedestrians being assaulted by a large group of young people along Broad Street about 9:30 p.m... the mob ranged from 50 to 100 people and that participants not only assaulted people but also threw trash cans and lit fireworks...

Police are seeking a joint hearing for the juveniles arrested and linked to the flash mob that filed into a 69th Street department store last week and stole sneakers, socks, watches and other merchandise... The group, all West Philadelphia residents, boarded SEPTA’s Elevated train in the city and got off at the 69th Street Terminal at approximately 7 p.m. on June 23... “They proceeded up the hill to the Sears store and entered together,” police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said, estimating 30 to 40 teens engaged in the planned flash mob...

A West Philadelphia man - charged in one of the first "flash mob" incidents in Center City, during which a bicyclist was beaten unconscious - pleaded guilty Monday in an agreement that will keep him in prison for five to 20 years... Stephen Lyde, 23, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, conspiracy, and riot in the May 30, 2009, assault on Thomas Fitzgerald, who was yanked from his bicycle and beaten during the melee at Broad and South Streets...

[Philadelphia] flash mobs have taken a more aggressive and raucous turn here as hundreds of teenagers have been converging downtown for a ritual that is part bullying, part running of the bulls: sprinting down the block, the teenagers sometimes pause to brawl with one another, assault pedestrians or vandalize property... ...In a Feb. 16 melee, 150 teenagers spilled out of the Gallery shopping mall east of City Hall during rush hour and rampaged through Macy’s, knocking down customers and damaging displays...

Pennsylvania has a law on the books that permits concealed carry, but Philadelphia's city officials have done their best to block and harass permit holders. The result: defenseless citizens at the mercy of mobs.

In the last two years, Philadelphia police have confiscated guns from at least nine men - including four security guards - who were carrying them legally, and only one of the guns has been returned, according to interviews with the men... Philadelphia has unusually strict criteria for obtaining a concealed-carry permit. Philadelphia, according to police and gun owners, relies heavily on a clause that allows denial of a permit based on "character and reputation" alone...

Flash mob crimes represent the confluence of two failed Democrat social engineering policies:

QOTD: "Even if you did the defense cut, defense cut is $50 billion. You could do that for 30 years, that $50 billion. You could collect all of that money. It wouldn't recover one year of Obama deficit spending. That is not where the money is. The money isn't in that or the oil, or the tax breaks the oil companies are getting, which is $2 billion a year. The money is in entitlements.

And unless Democrats are willing to do something important on entitlements, we won't get anywhere on this. That, I think, is the ultimate redline. I think Obama decided he doesn't want to touch entitlements in a significant way, because demagoguing entitlements and Medicare is the way he gets re-elected.” --Charles Krauthammer

Since its passage last year, over 1,300 ObamaCare waivers have been rewarded, exempting nearly 3.1 million Americans out of the monstrous health care overhaul. With several hundred more waivers pending, the Obama Administration has decided it will no longer accept waiver applications after September 22nd of this year. These waivers are extremely telling; if ObamaCare was truly the reform our healthcare system needs, why is the Administration allowing so many to opt out of the program?

It comes as no surprise that hundreds of companies are applying for waivers from ObamaCare. Business owners across the country continue to voice concern over how to implement the new ObamaCare rules without paying fines, laying off workers or even going bankrupt. As the book Why ObamaCare is Wrong for Americapoints out, “ObamaCare will lead to slower wage growth, fewer job opportunities, and more businesses going under.”

Yet, the waiver-granting process became increasingly questionable as companies applied for exemptions. It seemed that ObamaCare regulators were passing out waivers mostly to friends of the Administration. For instance, of the 204 waivers granted by the Administration in April, nearly twenty percent went to some of the finest restaurants and businesses within House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s district. Even more jaw-dropping, of those 3.1 million individuals exempted from ObamaCare through waivers, over half – 1.55 million – are union members.

President Obama’s health care reform grows the size of government and increases its impact on our lives. According to Why ObamaCare is Wrong for America, ObamaCare sets in motion a massive federal bureaucracy with at least 159 new federal agencies, creates more than $500 billion in new taxes and will take $575 billion away from Medicare. In my view, it is time that every American, regardless of their relationship with the Administration, receives a permanent waiver from ObamaCare. I remain committed to working towards the complete repeal of this legislation.

While many of the biggest name financiers feel that they can’t publicly support Mr. Obama through campaign contributions the way they did in 2008 — “it would be bad for business,” one brand-name chief executive of a major bank acknowledged — some still plan to vote for him. And some begrudgingly acknowledged that they don’t yet see a viable alternative to Mr. Obama among the Republican field.

It also turns out that Wall Street is not the only one concerned about optics. The president’s re-election campaign has not been actively courting Wall Street’s biggest C.E.O.’s to appear at such fund-raisers out of fear that their support could offend his most liberal backers, two people involved in planning his fund-raiser at Daniel said.

“A picture of [Goldman Sachs CEO] Lloyd [Blankfein] and Obama together probably isn’t helpful,” one of these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid upsetting his role in the campaign... While Wall Street executives still complain about the president’s name-calling and pressure for a regulatory overhaul, many say privately that his bark has been worse than his bite.

“Obama hasn’t been too bad to banks. He could have been worse,” said a top executive at one of the nation’s largest banks, a big supporter in the past who decided against attending the dinner because he did not want his colleagues and clients to see him supporting the president... “His rhetoric was obnoxious,” he added, referring to the “fat cat” comments, “but since the midterms, he’s turned it off.”

He pointed to the appointment of William Daley, a former senior executive at JPMorgan Chase, as the president’s chief of staff as a sign of Mr. Obama’s shifting approach toward big business... Mr. Obama’s dinner last week raised $2.3 million, outpacing an original projection of $1.5 million. And the Democratic National Committee raised $10.5 million in May, surpassing the Republican National Committee, which raised $6.2 million...

Monday, June 27, 2011

If this Republic survives the Obama presidency, I truly look forward to the first comprehensive, tell-all biography of our 44th president. Because when it comes to stories like this one, I'm betting we've only seen the tip of the iceberg.

The Obama 'Green Jobs' Scam That Redistributed Half-a-Billion Dollars to His Political Backers

Solyndra, Inc. was supposed to have showcased the effectiveness of the Obama administration’s stimulus and green jobs initiatives, but instead it has become the center of congressional attention for waste, fraud and abuse of such programs.

According to a Feb. 17 letter signed by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, Michigan Republican, and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns, Florida Republican, to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the Fremont, Calif.-based solar panel manufacturer should never have received a $535 million loan guarantee from the stimulus.*

...The Energy Department estimated in a March 20, 2009 press release that the loan guarantee would create 3,000 construction jobs and a further 1,000 jobs after the plant opened... And President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden each personally showcased Solyndra as an example of how stimulus dollars were at work creating jobs, during appearances at the company over the course of the following year...

...Obama made similar claims in a May 26, 2010 speech at the plant, but the 1,000 jobs he and Biden touted in their respective speeches failed to materialize...

Instead, Solyndra announced on Nov. 3 it planned to postpone expanding the plant, which put the taxpayers on the hook to the tune of $390.5 million taxpayers... It also announced that it no longer planned to hire the 1,000 workers that Obama and Biden had touted in their speeches and that it planned to close one of its older factories and planned to lay-off 135 temporary or contract workers and 40 full-time employees.

A closer look at the company shows it has never turned a profit since it was founded in 2005... And Solyndra’s auditor declared that “the company has suffered recurring losses, negative cash flows since inception and has a net stockholders’ deficit that, among other factors, [that] raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a growing concern” in ... March 2010...

A June 2010 Wall Street Journal report indicating that Solyndra’s majority owner, Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, was a major fundraiser for the 2008 Obama-Biden campaign...

In other words, your kids and grandkids will be paying back that half-a-billion dollars (with interest) -- which was borrowed from the Chinese -- to pay off a huge Obama contributor (coincidentally).

...Some time ago it was revealed that in its rush to "catch up" with western military technology, China has now developed an aircraft carrier and a stealth fighter (reverse engineering efficiency notwithstanding)...

Now, it appears that China has developed its first ever unmanned drone...

...Wired has the latest: "It was another big reveal in a long history of them...

...Six months after the Chinese air force let the first photos of its new stealth fighter leak online, Beijing’s military has "accidentally" showed off another secretive weapon system: a small drone, apparently used to scout ahead of China’s fast-growing fleet of warships...

...Details of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle — gleaned entirely from a snapshot (PDF) taken by a Japanese navy patrol plane last week — are sketchy, at best. But the new UAV certainly represents a step forward in China’s development of American-style spy drones." Of course, the "leak" is anything but, and is merely another attempt to demonstrate its ongoing scramble to keep up with the US across all verticals.

President Obama’s solution to a shortage of doctors caused by Obamacare? Spy on them. ...Of course, that is not the spin from the New York Times:

Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers” to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.

The administration says the survey will address a “critical public policy problem”: the increasing shortage of primary care doctors, including specialists in internal medicine and family practice. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates.

...“I don’t like the idea of the government snooping,” said Dr. Raymond Scalettar, an internist in Washington. “It’s a pernicious practice — Big Brother tactics, which should be opposed.”

So, American Medical Association, how’s that support of Obamacare working out for you?

Something like the Ryan approach will be crucial to the future of Medicare. The program is set to go bankrupt in a decade, and seems past the point of small fixes or yet another tweak to the price-control formula (as proposed under Obamacare). A broader reform must come. Medicare's history, its importance to the seniors who depend on it, and the nature of its fiscal problems suggest that such a reform must take account of six factors.

First, we must remember that Medicare's primary achievement — protecting economically vulnerable retirees — is a salutary one, the preservation of which must be the cornerstone of reform ... As many have suggested (and as the Ryan budget proposes), reforms should be implemented only for future enrollees age 55 or younger, in order to allow for a gradual transition into a reformed system, and to preserve benefits for those who have long planned their retirements around the existing system.

Second, we must appreciate the power of cost-sharing ... from 2003 to 2010, Medicare's prescription-drug benefit contained significant cost-sharing provisions, in plans administered entirely by private insurers, and the program came in under budget as a result...

...Third, we must introduce means-testing into Medicare...

...Fourth, we should index the Medicare retirement age to life expectancy...

Fifth, we must address the substantial problem of Medicare fraud. It is estimated that $60 to $100 billion of annual Medicare spending — between 8% and 13% of the total — is fraudulent. Medicare processes over one billion claims per year, and is required by law to reimburse claims within 15 to 30 days. This makes it almost impossible to prevent criminal activity. Private administration of the program would do much to incentivize the development of more thorough auditing practices.

Finally, Medicare must evolve into a system in which individuals can shop for value in insurance plans...

This moment in our politics — when our long-term fiscal situation has suddenly captured public attention — might just offer the opportunity to attempt such [steps]. It is an opportunity we must not allow to slip by.

But instead of seriously addressing their own collapsing entitlement programs, Democrats instead demagogue serious plans like that proposed by Paul Ryan. They mock those would repair the system. They run commercials showing Republicans pushing Grandma off a cliff.

And they will spy on doctors and eventually enslave them. Too harsh a term? What would you call compelling doctors to work at wages dictated by the state? To serve the federal government in locations specified by the state --- whether they like it or not?

That, my friends, is the inevitable result of Obamacare. Indentured servitude at best, slavery at worst. In other words, Obamacare has nothing at all to do with improving health care in America. It is intended to control you. Your body, the physical container of your soul, so that the government -- not God and not family -- becomes the most important entity in your life.

It is a totalitarian system and antithetical to the America's founding, traditions and history.

QOTD: "With the City of Chicago already running into major trouble with roving bands of black gangs attacking and robbing people in broad daylight in wiliding incidents (and it’s only a matter of time before they start killing people) we have a top cop more interested in appearing at racist churches making race-baiting speeches than doing his job. Emanuel better watch out because what we obviously have here is just another arrogant jack-booted thug that thinks he should be allowed to make up his own laws instead of enforcing the laws actually on the books." --Warner Todd Huston

Thousands of newly retired school administrators will earn more during retirement than most Californians will make during their working careers.

The number of educators receiving $100,000-plus annual pensions jumped 650 percent from 2005 to 2011, going from 700 to 5,400, according to a Bee review of data from the California State Teachers' Retirement System... [these retirees] get millions more than they put into the system.

Booming administrator salaries are largely behind the trend. Public school superintendents, on average, earned $168,000 in base pay last year, roughly 56 percent more than they did 10 years ago... A series of benefit enhancements a decade ago also explain the rise... as a result, more than a third of the state's six-figure pensioners earn more each year in retirement than they ever did on the job.

...Like other public pension systems, CalSTRS has financial problems. The value of its assets isn't enough to cover what it has promised in benefits. System officials estimate CalSTRS will be unable to fund benefits in about 30 years unless the Legislature implements higher contribution rates for school districts, employees or the state.

California isn't alone. The Manhattan Institute estimates that teacher pension systems around the country are, in aggregate, $1 trillion underfunded.

But California and its ludicrous governor, a product of the public sector unions, are completely off the rails. Like the blue states of Illinois and New York, the inevitable result of Democrat governance -- bankruptcy -- is obvious for all to see.

...Projections of the nation's impending doom have worsened: We face destruction if we don't act, and the crisis is accelerating.

Last year, the CBO predicted our national debt would be 91 percent of gross domestic product in 2021. Now, just a year later, it is projected to be 101 percent in 2021.

It gets worse. The debt is forecasted to be 150 percent of GDP by 2030 and 200 percent by 2037. And, if you can even imagine this, it will proliferate more rapidly thereafter. On our present course, by 2035, federal interest payments will be 9 percent of our entire economy, compared with 1 percent today.

Adding insult to injury, Obamacare, which Obama fraudulently sold as an indispensable component of balancing the budget, will greatly drive up health care costs. The CBO says that mandatory federal spending on health care will increase by 86 percent, from 5.6 percent of GDP presently to 10.4 percent over the next 24 years. Don't say we didn't warn you... Adding aggravation to insult is the recently discovered "glitch" in Obamacare that allows for more than 3 million middle-class Americans to qualify for Medicaid...

What Limbaugh alludes to is a devastating problem: the estimates of Medicare collapsing in only a dozen years and Social Security imploding shortly thereafter assumes rosy growth and hiring projections that can't possibly happen in the current economic climate. In short, these disastrous entitlement programs will collapse much sooner than anyone is willing to admit.

These are the disastrous policy failures that our children and grandchildren will have to pay for, in the unlikely event our financial system hasn't already collapsed. This is Democrat child abuse, plain and simple.